You are cordially invited!
During the years I attended school, we carried home invitations for our parents, inviting them over for the Annual School Day or the Sports Day. Our teacher would painstakingly write neatly on the board, ‘ Mrs. & Mr. _______ ’, ask us to take it down on the envelope and complete it by adding our father’s name and surname. She would also specifically mention to add ‘Dr.’ where applicable. One was very particular about spelling for ‘ Dr. Chakraborty ’ would not attend if he was addressed ‘ Dr. Chakravarty’ ! We seemed to have little problem those days as we did not have any other title to worry about. An army unit came much later and I often heard my friends remark how careful they had to be while addressing army personnel! Personally, I have never had any issues for I was used to seeing my mother’s signature which included Smt. (Srimathi, for short) her name followed by my father’s name. When I started signing, I gave up the Srimathi part, writing my own name and my hus...